Before there was Valentin Tomberg, there was Gregory Ottonovich Mebes, or G.O.M. He led an esoteric school in St. Petersburg, from which we get his own Meditations on the Major Arcana of the Tarot.

In Meditations on the Tarot (MotT), Tomberg describes his encounter with that school:

At St. Petersburg in Russia, around fifty years ago, there was a group of esotericists who composed the flower of the capital’s “intelligentsia”. This group was internally hierarchical, i.e. it comprised “grades” — Martinist, Templar and Rosicrucian. It was, properly said, a school of teaching and training comprising three “courses” or “classes”—first or Martinist, second or Templar, and highest or Rosicrucian.
Continue reading “Gregory Ottonovich Mebes”

In Arcanum VIII Justice, Valentin Tomberg discusses the ideal of equilibrium, which is the general meaning of the card. Although many readers consider that meaning to be the goal of their efforts, on the contrary, that is just the first step on the path to the Hermetic meaning. Tomberg explains:

[The meaning] does not lie in the generality obtained by the method of abstraction, but rather in the depth obtained by the method of penetration.

The most abstract ideas are most superficial. One of the meanings of the first commandment – Thou shalt have no other gods before me – is that one should not substitute an intellectual abstraction of God for the spiritual reality of God.

Thus abstractions like the First Cause or the Absolute are not substitutes for the living reality of God. Nevertheless, they have their use as a starting point for a deeper meditation. We read:

Because no one accepts a hypothesis as absolute truth, just as no one worships a sacred image as absolute reality. Yet hypotheses are fruitful in that they lead us to the truth, in guiding us to it within the totality of our experience … a concept or abstract idea does not replace spiritual reality, but rather gives an impulse and direction towards it … Let us take abstract ideas as hypotheses leading to the truth.

The following passage, published in 1914, expresses the same notion.

The intellectual arguments for the existence of God are necessarily of a somewhat dry and speculative nature … The arguments will prove that God exists, but they will not present God vividly as a real living person, felt to be existing and intimately present, as an imposing reality exercising, so to speak, the magnetism of personality on the soul … Man does not live by pure intellect alone. What he longs for, what he is influenced by, is concrete reality Now this is precisely the purpose of the religious instinct—to seize on the dry, cold, abstract truth of the intellect, and to make it concrete; to clothe the dry bones with flesh, and warm the cold speculative idea till its object is vividly realized as a present and imposing thing. It is only when this happens that God will become in practical effect a Being to be reckoned with, and to be entered into communion with as the object of religious worship and moral service. ~ Ernest Hull, God, Man, and Religion

Genesis, the Gospels, and the Apocalypse dominate the readings for the Our Father Course. Since those books (and there are others) are understood by Valentin Tomberg to be composed of spiritual exercises, he gives us some clues about how to read such books. Keep these points in mind as you do the meditative readings for day. In particular, in the Meditations, Tomberg explains how to read the Apocalypse as well as the Gospels. These techniques will apply to the other readings as well.

How to read the Apocalypse

You may come to a different understanding from Tomberg’s commentary on the Course. But this is how he suggests reading the Apocalpyse:

the “key” to the Apocalypse of St. John is nowhere to be found… for it is not at all a matter of interpreting it with a view to extracting a philosophical, metaphysical or historical system. The key to the Apocalypse is to practise it, i.e. to make use of it as a book of spiritual exercises which awaken from sleep ever-deeper layers of consciousness.

The seven letters to the churches, the seven seals of the sealed book, the seven trumpets and the seven vials signify, all together, a course of spiritual exercises composed of twenty-eight exercises. For as the Apocalypse is a revelation put into writing, it is necessary, in order to understand it, to establish in oneself a state of consciousness which is suited to receive revelations.

1. It is the state of concentration without effort (taught by the first Arcanum),
2. followed by a vigilant inner silence (taught by the second Arcanum),
3. which becomes an inspired activity of imagination and thought, where the conscious self acts together with superconsciousness (teaching of the third Arcanum).
4. Lastly, the conscious self halts its creative activity and contemplates —in letting pass in review—everything which preceded, with a view to summarising it (practical teaching of the fourth Arcanum).

The mastery of these four psychurgical operations, symbolised by “The Magician”, The High Priestess”, “The Empress” and “The Emperor”, is the key to the Apocalypse. One will search in vain for another.

How to read the Gospels

This requires the use of the imagination (step 3 above) to properly read the Gospels. This is so radically different from the scholarly techniques of textual analysis, etc., which mostly desiccate the texts.

The Gospels, likewise, are spiritual exercises, i.e. one has not only to read and re-read them, but also to plunge entirely into their element, to breathe their air, to Participate as an eye-witness, as it were, in the events described there — and all this not in a scrutinising way, but as an “admirer”, with ever-growing admiration.

The Higher Self

I recently listened to a super-correct theologian who objected to Hermetic teaching, calling the idea of raising one’s state of consciousness “satanic”. It is best to leave such types at peace, but, for us, we follow St Bonaventura, St Augustine, John Climacus, Dante, St John of the Cross, and many others who documented the ascent to God. I have documented their teachings on my blog; I do not create new doctrines. Tomberg uses terms derived from Steiner to represent these higher states; I’ll probably continue to use them as a convenience, but that does not mean a full endorsement of Anthroposophy. Thomas Aquinas claimed we cannot know God in his essence in this life, yet we can go as far as we are capable of. This is how Tomberg describes it in the Meditations:

The transcendental Self is not God. It is in his image and after his likeness, according to the law of analogy or kinship, but it is not identical with God. There are still several degrees on the ladder of analogy which separate it from the summit of the ladder —from God. These degrees which are higher than it are its “stars”—or the ideals to which it aims. The Apocalypse specifies the number of them: there are twelve degrees higher than that of the consciousness of the human transcendental Self. It is necessary, therefore, in order to attain to the ONE God, to elevate oneself successively to degrees of consciousness of the nine spiritual hierarchies and the Holy Trinity.

As preparation for the Our Father course, please look at these daily exercises. Initially, you should try each one for a week or two. Spend 5 minutes in the morning with the exercise, and then throughout the day when it occurs to you.

When you have become comfortable, then do each exercise on the appointed day. Eventually, add the daily examination, which is the synthesis of the other exercises, to your practice.

Saturday: Right Opinion

To pay attention to one’s ideas.

To think only significant thoughts. To learn little by little to separate in one’s thoughts the essential from the nonessential, the eternal from the transitory, truth from mere opinion.

In listening to the talk of one’s fellow-men, to try and become quite still inwardly, foregoing all assent, and still more all unfavourable judgments (criticism, rejection), even in one’s thoughts and feelings.

Sunday: Right Judgment

To determine on even the most insignificant matter only after fully reasoned deliberation. All unthinking behaviour, all meaningless actions, should be kept far away from the soul. One should always have well-weighed reasons for everything. And one should definitely abstain from doing anything for which there is no significant reason.

Once one is convinced of the rightness of a decision, one must hold fast to it, with inner steadfastness.

Right judgments have been formed independently of sympathies and antipathies.

Monday: Right Word

Talking. Only what has sense and meaning should come from the lips of one striving for higher development. All talking for the sake of talking – to kill time — is in this sense harmful.

The usual kind of conversation, a disjointed medley of remarks, should be avoided. This does not mean shutting oneself off from intercourse with one’s fellows; it is precisely then that talk should gradually be led to significance. One adopts a thoughtful attitude to every speech and answer taking all aspects into account. Never talk without cause — be gladly silent. One tries not to talk too much or too little. First listen quietly; then reflect on what has been said.

Tuesday: Right Deed

External actions. These should not be disturbing for our fellow-men. Where an occasion calls for action out of one’s inner being, deliberate carefully how one can best meet the occasion — for the good of the whole, the lasting happiness of man, the eternal.

Where one does things of one’s own accord, out of one’s own initiative: consider most thoroughly beforehand the effect of one’s actions.

Wednesday: Right Standpoint

The ordering of life. To live in accordance with Nature and Spirit. Not to be swamped by the external trivialities of life. To avoid all that brings unrest and haste into life. To hurry over nothing, but also not to be indolent. To look on life as a means for working towards higher development and to behave accordingly.

Thursday: Right Habit

Human Endeavour. One should take care to do nothing that lies beyond one’s powers — but also to leave nothing undone which lies within them.

To look beyond the everyday, the momentary, and to set oneself aims and ideals connected with the highest duties of a human being. For instance, in the sense of the prescribed exercises, to try to develop oneself so that afterwards one may be able all the more to help and advise one’s fellow-men — though perhaps not in the immediate future.

This can be summed up as: To let all the foregoing exercises become a habit

Friday: Right Memory

(Remembering what has been learnt from experiences).

The endeavour to learn as much as possible from life.

Nothing goes by us without giving us a chance to gain experiences that are useful for life. If one has done something wrongly or imperfectly, that becomes a motive for doing it rightly or more perfectly, later on.

If one sees others doing something, one observes them with the like end in view (yet not coldly or heartlessly). And one does nothing without looking back to past experiences which can be of assistance in one’s decisions and achievements.

One can learn from everyone — even from children if one is attentive.

Every Day: Right Examination

To turn one’s gaze inwards from time to time, even if only for five minutes daily at the same time. In so doing one should sink down into oneself, carefully take counsel with oneself, test and form one’s principles of life, run through in thought one’s knowledge — or lack of it — weigh up one’s duties, think over the contents and true purpose of life, feel genuinely pained by one’s own errors and imperfections.

In a word: labour to discover the essential, the enduring, and earnestly aim at goals in accord with it: for instance, virtues to be acquired. (Not to fall into the mistake of thinking that one has done something well, but to strive ever further towards the highest standards.)

• Turn one’s gaze inwards from time to time, even if only for five minutes daily.
• Sink down into oneself.
• Carefully take counsel with oneself.
• Test and form one’s principles of life.
• Run through in thought one’s knowledge — or lack of it
• Weigh up one’s duties.
• Think over the contents and true purpose of life.
• Feel genuinely pained by one’s own errors and imperfections.
• Labour to discover the essential, the enduring, and earnestly aim at goals in accord with it.